Monday, November 19. 2007

So...the Broadstuff Blog was disabled from Facebook today. Checked the FAQ as requested, and it says:

Disabled

Why was my account disabled?

Your account was disabled because you violated Facebook’s Terms of Use, to which you agreed when you first registered for an account on the site. Accounts can either be disabled for repeat offenses or for one, particularly egregious violation.

Facebook does not allow users to register with fake names, to impersonate any person or entity, or to falsely state or otherwise misrepresent themselves or their affiliations.

We do not allow users to send unsolicited or harassing messages to people they don’t know, and we remove posts that advertise a product, service, website, or opportunity.

Our Code of Conduct outlines the types of content we do not allow on the site. This includes any obscene, pornographic, or sexually explicit photos, as well as any photos that depict graphic violence. We also remove content, photo or written, that threatens, intimidates, harasses, or brings unwanted attention or embarrassment to an individual or group of people.
Can I see the content that got me disabled?

Unfortunately, for technical and security reasons, Facebook cannot provide you with a description or copy of the removed content.

Does Facebook remove everything that gets reported?

Facebook reviews every report we receive to determine whether or not the content violates our Terms of Use. Any content that is considered obscene, violent, malicious or otherwise offensive will be removed. If you received a warning about an item that was taken down, then we have established that it violated these terms.

Also, for whatever reason, Facebook didn't send me an email telling me what it may do so I could respond....it just shut us off. Great customer relationship management, guys. As you can imagine, it increases my love for Facebook hugely....not!

What's curious is we've been on Facebook for 6 months or so - even blogged about it at the time - with nary a peep from them, and if anything our usage has been declining, so why now?

Also, its interesting since there is a bit of very recent and public prior case history here, as just a few weeks another blog was disabled but was re-enabled after they argued that the blog name was a non de plume of a known person*. We would argue the same as our blog makes it clear that (i) it is written by us (even to the extent of having our pictures on it), (ii) All the people friending us are personal friends or other bloggers who know and respect us and (iii) the Facebook site made it quite clear that it was an experiment and we used a profile as there was no company facility at the time, and Facebook's Groups functionality is appalling

In addition, the policy is not rigorously enforced - as we pointed out (and others did) the last time this happened, the numbers of Karl Marx's, Jesus Christs, Julius Caesars etc was clearly in excess of the actual persons, and they also happened to be dead - which makes it very unlikely they too are the real individuals. I suppose you can argue that "Broadstuff Blog" is obviously not a real person, but then is "Jon Swift" or "Jesus Christ" any different?

Thirdly, last week we put up a Broadstuff Blog Page, which as far as we know is legal, but this is not accessible in the blanket ban either. Caveat Emptor any business who upsets these guys, this isn't commercial law operating here, its private law !

Is this all part of scrubbing the database to ready it for the Ad-stravaganza, as they could have kicked us off months ago?

The obligatory Amazon Kindle post - no free rides here !
Yesterday Amazon launched the Kindle e-Reader, and as Dave Winer complained, the GeekPress clamped on in a big way (see Techmeme this time yesterday) without really knowing what they were talking about. (We were too busy being thrown out of Facebook yeste

Facebook - Caveat Emptor, Cave Frater Magna
Caveat Emptor - let the buyer beware - once meant watch out that the seller of the goods wasn't going to foist dodgy stuff on you. In Facebookland it means not just that but that Big Brother (Frater Magna) is watching you.
And, as we noted in an earlie

Weblog: broadstuffTracked: Dec 01, 08:53

Scoble back into Facebook....Broadstuff - no chance ;)
So, Mr Scoble is back in after 24 hours, with a nice letter from Facebook:
Our standard process for handling cases when an account is disabled for security violations is to allow a user to appeal and remedy the situation. This is the process we have fo

I've actually read the Terms of FB, and while I don't think you were posing any danger by having a group account, it IS plainly prohibited in the Terms, so you can't really be mad for them enforcing the rules that you agreed to when you opened the account. Whether or not you actually read them at the time--I didn't read them until later--you legally agreed to follow them. It does suck that a harmless account gets kicked when numerous harmful accounts remain, but that's the way the cookie crumbles, right?

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